Tools, Dials & unexpected Levers

Fatherhood

Girls & boys have to fight their father & mother, but in a different way.

Girls have to fight their mother. They say “I won’t be like her”.

Boys have to kill their father. They say “I’ll beat him, I’ll be better”.

The crossed thing is all about love. Boys love their mother and girls love their dad, that’s it. Boys are weak, they just love. Girls find a husband like dad (in order to repair him), or the opposite of him (to feel secure at least – or challenged?).

My dad was great. He lost his father and grand-father at war. He was a sensitive person, and as a young man he was an actor and a singer. I thank him because of his curiosity, and because he built up a great pack of shelves : books. A treasure for me!

I think he’s been strongly affected by disillusions of life, and depression hit him deeply, for years. He died two years ago.

In a way he made me : I am a curious person, am interested in classic cinema, psychology, philosophy, literature and arts, and I’ve even been a musician once, for theater and dance.

In a way I prolonged what he began but in other ways. I have many more books and I never really stopped exploring culture. I made 2 CDs for dancers – but I stopped composing music. I let go things without bitterness. I just kept this : I stayed a romantic, I suppose… I believed in things…

At one moment, though, you feel, you have to feel the fight, the fatherness (I know it’s fatherhood, but I choose fatherness) becomes toxic. You watch him and his tastes and you’re like : OMG, NO.

It’s a whole story, and there are many ways to live it : you can cut all bonds (or your parents can do it for you if your family’s cursed), you can do “as if” and see them the less possible, you can just argue, etc… All of it, almost, becomes impossible. You have to overtake something, right?

At one moment, YOU become a father, a mother :

If you’re a normal person, you won’t even notice that your child is now a teenager then an adult judging you. You’re strong, and sure, and you play the “Bahhh the younglings they understand nothing”.

If you’re aware, that’s terrible : you see this in their eyes. Now, you ARE uncool and unfashionable. Then they begin to despise you, to fight, to hate your terrible music tastes, and your movies stink. Good to you : that’s how it goes!

Their turn, soon.

Thanks for reading!

Yes it’s me on the left. And I’m on the left of the first photography and in yellow on the last…